Christine Ross has expertise in designing and conducting rigorous evaluations of program impacts and descriptive, policy-focused studies in the areas of early childhood education, K–12 education, and child welfare policies and programs.

Ross has designed and conducted evaluations of early childhood education programs, including Mathematica’s national evaluation of Early Head Start and the Early Reading First program. She led a descriptive study of classroom quality and children’s outcomes in full- and part-day Head Start programs and prekindergarten programs in Chicago. She has also conducted and led systematic reviews of research evidence on early childhood education practices and curricula for the federal government’s What Works Clearinghouse, a trusted source of what works in education.

Ross is currently the content lead for the universal prekindergarten review area of the What Works Clearinghouse and principal investigator for the Regional Education Laboratory—Mid-Atlantic’s study of New Jersey’s principal evaluation system. Additionally, she leads an evaluation technical assistance team to provide support to grantees developing interventions to improve housing stability for youth who have been in foster care.

Ross holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Before joining Mathematica in 1989, she worked as a research associate for the National Academy of Sciences and an associate analyst for the Congressional Budget Office.

ACF funded 18 grantees to develop and test comprehensive programs to reduce homelessness among former foster youth. Mathematica is providing implementation technical assistance to six grantees to strengthen their abilitly to use data to make evidence-based decisions.

This project builds on Mathematica’s study of the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), and a complementary evaluation technical assistance project, to support evaluations of promising oregnancy prevention programs led by PREP grantees and develop curricula for underserved youth populations.

In recent years, systematic reviews have been used to inform new policy initiatives, especially at the federal level, as well as funding decisions and program development.
Systematic reviews involve a thorough review of the research literature on an issue, and use an objective and transparent approach...